Life Inside the Harem at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

The Topkapi Palace Museum Harem Apartments are among the top tourist attractions at Topkapi Palace.

For almost 400 years (1465-1856), Topkapi was used as the primary residence for the Ottoman Sultans and the harem was where the Sultan and his family lived and had their private apartments.

Entry beyond the gate to the harem was prohibited except to the Sultan, the queen mother, the Sultan’s consorts,concubines and favourites, the princes and the eunuchs guarding the harem.

Now, for 15 Turkish Lira, tourists can take a peek inside. It is a labyrinth of passageways, courtyards, ornate rooms, canopied seating areas, finely decorated tiles, exquisite calligraphy and exotic lattice screens from behind which women could see what was going on unobserved.

The Privy Chamber of Sultan Murad III, built in 1578, is particularly sumptuous with its gilded canopy and walls lined with the finest Ottoman tile art.

While the architecture is lovely, I feel it would have been nice for the museum to provide a little more information about what life was like in the harem and display paintings and photos of some of the people who lived there. Or maybe even employ a few actors and actresses to lounge around on their ottomans (excuse the pun), idly fanning themselves with peacock feather while their bodyguards look on. But I suppose you just can’t find the eunuchs these days!

In the absence of this information I have had to conduct a little of my own research:

Orientalist Artists’ Images of Harems

Most people’s impressions of an Ottoman harem would have been influenced by Hollywood or by fanciful paintings by Orientalist artists like John Frederick Lewis or Jean Jules Antoine Lecomte du Nouy, who probably never stepped foot in a harem, or certainly never when semi-clad women were present.

The reality may have been somewhat different. In Philip Mansel’s fascinating book, Sultans in Splendour, he explains that in the Ottoman harem, women were divided into kadines (consorts), iqbals (favourites) and guezdes (those ‘noticed’ for a moment).

It is not known which category this lady of the harem fell into. (Perhaps she was employed by the Sultan’s mother for her skills as a backgammon opponent).

When this photo was taken in 1867, the Sultan had already relocated from Topkapi to the sprawling European style Dolmabahçe Palace.

By the year 1900 it was estimated there were still some 400-500 female slaves in the royal courts at Dolmabahçe, Yildiz and other residences.

 

Circassian Women

The majority of the female inmates in the harem were from Circassia, an area whose women were prized by the Ottoman Sultans for their beauty, elegance and spirit.

Where is, or was, Circassia? As this historical map shows, it was in the troubled north Caucasus region neighbouring Russian republics like Abkhazia, Chechnya, Dagestan and Ossetia which are often in the news for the wrong reasons.

Circassia (part of which is now renamed Krasnodar Krai) will certainly be in the news next year as its major city, Sochi, is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Eunuchs

In 1903 there were 194 serving or retired eunuchs at the Ottoman Court.

Typically they were seized in Sudan and castrated before sale. They were often sent to the Sultan as gifts by provincial governors in the Ottoman empire such as the Sherif of Mecca.

The Chief Eunuch managed the administration of the harem and as such was a powerful official.

Valide Sultan

The mother of the reigning Sultan (often a Circassian herself) was known as the Valide Sultan and was the most important woman in the empire. It was she who got to chose which harem girls to present to the Sultan thus giving her plenty of power.

Having a couple of hundred concubines to call upon might sound like a dream come true for most men but for the Sultan, it must have been somewhat spoilt by having his Mum in charge.

There is a three-tiered fountain in the Sultan’s privy chambers which may have been installed so that the sound of running water would prevent his mother from eavesdropping from behind lattice screens as he whispered sweet nothings into the ear of his iqbal.

Being a Sultan was not all it was cracked up to be!

Still, if he tired of his concubines, he could always turn to his dwarves for entertainment. They were retained at the Ottoman court to crack jokes and serve at table right up until the fall of the empire.

Sirkeci Railway Station, Istanbul

Istanbul’s historic Sirkeci railway station (also known as Istanbul Gar) was officially opened on 3 November 1890.

The station was designed by a German architect August Jachmund who incorporated oriental elements into his blueprint.

The station is located in the Sirkeci district in the heart of the old part of the city on the European side of the Bosphorus. In order for the railway line to reach Sirkeci, the railway line runs along the shoreline of the Sea of Marmara and the Sultan allowed a stretch of track to be built through the gardens skirting his Topkapi Palace. There used to be a large beer garden and outdoor restaurants in front of the station on terraces leading down to the sea but now a petrol station and a busy highway block direct access to the waterfront.

The terminal connects Turkey to the rest of the European rail network as well as being the terminus for various suburban and local routes. However, if you want the train to Ankara or all points east you need to cross to the Asian shore of the Bosphorus and catch a train from Haydarpaşa, Istanbul’s other main station.

Sirkeci is a fairly quiet station these days but still has a popular restaurant, the Orient Express. During the 1950’s and 60’s the restaurant was the favourite haunt for journalists, writers and intellectuals but nowadays is more likely to be filled with tourists trying to imagine how this place must have been during the golden age of rail travel.

Orient Express

Talking of the Orient Express, Sirkeci was, and still is occasionally, the terminus for the world’s most famous train, the Orient Express.

The first Orient Express left Paris on 4 October 1883 bound for Istanbul (the old Sirkeci station) via Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Ulm, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Rousse and Varna. The journey covered 3094km and took 80 hours. This service stopped running in 1977.

Confusingly, there is another luxury train service with a similar name, the Venice Simplon Orient Express which runs mainly between Calais and Venice but does do periodic side trips to Istanbul by a more southerly route than the original.

This route map might help to clarify (or perhaps not!).

This train of course was the setting for one of Agatha Christie’s most famous Poirot novels, Murder on the Orient Express.

In the book, Poirot was staying at the Tokatlian Hotel in Constantinople before catching the Orient Express back to London. That hotel burnt down in 1954.

While writing  Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie stayed at another nearby hotel, the Pera Palace.

 

The Pera Palace’s Orient Bar is said to have been a popular hangout for the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Hemingway (is there any famous bar in the world where Hemingway did not drink?). My parents and sister stayed at the Pera Palace back in the early 1970’s while they were driving back to England from Pakistan. I considered staying there on my recent trip to Istanbul but following the hotel’s multi-million dollar refit and acquisition by Dubai’s upmarket Jumeirah Group, it is sadly beyond the Thrifty Traveller’s usual budget.

Railway Museum

Next to the waiting room at Sirkeci station is a small railway museum which is open from Tuesday to Saturday and is free admission.

Its exhibits include crockery and cutlery used on the Orient Express, the driver’s cab of an electric train, a rather modest Hornby model train layout, the station master’s desk and chair, an Austrian tile stove dating from 1890 used for heating the waiting room, signage and other ‘railwayana’.

International Train Travel from Turkey

Sirkeci station has a ticket counter for international trains. It is still possible to retrace the route of the Orient Express on regular trains. The first leg of the journey might be Istanbul – Bucharest. Ticket prices range from €38.30 for 2nd class to €112.10 for 1st Class including a sleeping car supplement. If you wanted to go all the way to Paris it would probably be cheaper to purchase an Interail Global Pass Card.

For the more adventurous traveller, how about travelling from Istanbul (Haydarpaşa station) to Teheran by train? The 58 hour journey costs just €33 1st class.

For more details on fares and timetables you can refer to the official Turkish State Railways website.

1890 Tile Stove at Sirkeci Railway Museum

Ottoman Bank Museum, Istanbul

Istanbul has some great museums such as Topkapi Palace Museum, Hagia Sophia Museum, Basilica Cistern and Kariye Museum.

One of the lesser known museums is the Ottoman Bank Museum, where my son and I were almost the only visitors. This museum may not have broad appeal but I found it fascinating.

It is located on Bankalar Caddesi (Bank Street) in the Karakoy district of the city, in a grand building constructed in 1890 which served as the head office of Ottoman Bank until 1999.

The building is now the home of SALT, an independent not-for-profit cultural institution founded by Garanti Bank, which took over the remaining operations of Ottoman Bank in 2001.

The Ottoman Bank Museum is in the basement of this fine building, in and around the bank’s former vaults and strong rooms.

Entrance to the museum is free of charge.

 

Brief History of Ottoman Bank

The Crimean War (in which the Ottoman Empire fought on the side of the British and French against the Russians) helped persuade the Ottomans of the military and economic importance of railways. Construction of a railway network became a priority but required finance from abroad. British capitalists, who were keen to be involved in the railway construction projects, found it difficult to cooperate with the government in the absence of a state bank and an effective monetary system in the Ottoman Empire.

To address this issue, Sultan Abdulmecid issued a Reform Edict in 1856 stating that:

Institutions such as banks will be established in order to correct the coinage system of My Sublime State and to give credit to its financial affairs.

Two British entrepreneurs, Stephen Sleigh and Peter Pasquali, had been planning to establish a British Bank of the Levant but they turned their attention instead to Turkey. They were instrumental in getting the Ottoman Bank off the ground.  After obtaining a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria, Ottoman Bank opened for business on 13 June 1856 with capital of £500,000.

Ottoman Bank was a private British commercial bank with modest resources and had to content itself with a handful of branches initially rather than fulfil the role of state bank which is what the Ottomans really wanted.

The Ottoman Empire saw the importance of establishing a state bank for its financial stability. A number of foreign and local groups were vying for such a concession but all were rejected in favour of the Ottoman Bank. However the Ottoman government was unwilling to hand over all the powers of a state (central) bank to an institution which was wholly in British hands and they insisted that its capital base be opened up to French investors.

On 4 February 1863, the bank, with its expanded capital provided by British and French shareholders, was elevated to the status of state bank and renamed Imperial Ottoman Bank (or more frequently Banque Impériale Ottomane since French was the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean at that time and the language used in the bank’s internal operations).

With its new status, the bank took on more merchant banking activities such as financing railways and public works, including Beirut Port and the Beirut-Damascus railway line.

The bank moved its head office to this building in 1892. The illustration below shows how the bank’s gold reserves, amounting to 1 1/2 million liras and weighing 13 tons, were transported.

In 1896 the building was attacked by a group of armed Armenians who threatened to blow up the bank. The then governor, Sir Edgar Vincent, escaped through a skylight and alerted the authorities. The attackers eventually gave up their weapons in return for safe passage to France on Sir Edgar’s private yacht.

When the Ottomans entered WWI on the side of the Germans, the Imperial Ottoman Bank was seen as being on the enemy’s side. Its British and French management were forced to leave and the bank’s operations were crippled for the duration of the war. Even after the allied victory, things were never really the same again although the bank was allowed to continue acting as state bank until 1931 when the Central Bank was established.

The name changed back to Ottoman Bank in 1924 and from 1933 onwards it reverted to being purely a commercial bank. The bank sold most of its overseas operations in 1969 to National & Grindlays Bank. In 1996 Ottoman Bank was sold to Dogus Group and it is now part of Garanti Bank.

The Museum

After reading about the history of the bank, visitors to the museum get to go inside some of the strong rooms which still have their original vault doors, safe cabinets and old ledger books. The safes were made by Chatwood’s of London, Manchester, Leeds and Bolton according to the inscription on the lock mechanism.

 

One safe contains a considerable number of rather soiled-looking banknotes which are folded into quarters. Ottoman Bank was a banknote issuer.

In another strong room some old staff records have been put on display including full length photographs and some ‘feuilles de personnel’.

This employee’s name was Mrs. Anna Hanss, working at the Smyrne (Izmir) branch.

She was born on 26 July 1871.

She was a widow.

She was Catholic.

Her nationality was stated as ‘Serbo Yougo Slave’.

A breakdown of employees by nationality and religion/ethnicity as at 1906 demonstrates the cosmopolitan nature of the Ottoman Empire which was spread over a wide area of south-east Europe and the Middle East. The bank’s recruitment policy appears to have been skewed against Muslims who made up a disproportionately small number of employees and were engaged mainly in lowly paid non-clerical jobs.

Also on display are a few examples of correspondence with customers such as this beautifully handwritten letter in copperplate style, a skill which appears to be as dead as the Ottoman Empire. (The writing may be beautiful but is not easy to read for the modern eye.) And what a nice telegraphic address that customer had – ‘Victor-Constantinople’!

Overall, a very interesting museum for an ex-banker like me though I’m not sure my son was that impressed.

Istanbul’s Domes and Minarets

Istanbul is well known for its magnificent mosques. Their domes and minarets dominate the skyline of the old parts of the city and quite a few of them allow non-Muslim visitors to take a look inside and admire their intricately decorated walls and ceilings.

Here are four of the most popular ones:

Blue Mosque (built 1609 –1616)

The Sultanahmet (Blue) Mosque is probably the most famous landmark in Istanbul.

Here is the exquisite interior.

Hagia Sophia

This building is much older having started out life as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral in 537. It served as a mosque from 1453 until 1931, since when it has been a museum. It is a very popular tourist destination and queues can extend right round the block at peak times. Rather than queuing, pop down a side entrance to the garden of the Hagia Sophia where the tombs of former Ottoman rulers and their close relatives are located. There are three large mausoleums and one small mausoleum with elaborately decorated interiors. There are no crowds here and entrance is free unlike the main museum.

Rustem Paşa Mosque (built 1561-1563)

This small mosque is built above the vaulted shops of the Straw Weavers’ Market, not far from the Egyptian (Spice) Bazaar.

The mosque is named after the Grand Vizier Rustem Pasha who was son-in-law to Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (Grand Vizier has to be my favourite job title!) The mosque is famous for its blue iznik decorative tiles.

Suleymaniye Mosque (built 1550-1557)

This mosque, named after Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, is considered by many to be the greatest mosque in Istanbul and its hilltop position ensures that it is visible from all parts of the city. It was extensively refurbished in 1956.

Istanbul – The Assassin’s Creed Trail

When I asked my son if he would like to stop over in Istanbul for a few days on our way back to Malaysia from England, he was very enthusiastic about the idea.

It turns out that Istanbul (or rather, Constantinople, as it was then) is the setting for one of his favourite Play Station games, Assassin’s Creed Revelations. He thought it would be fun to visit some of the actual locations where the game’s action is supposed to take place.

I have watched him play Assassin’s Creed. I can’t pretend to understand what it is all about. It seems to involve a lot of aimless walking and running, scaling impossibly sheer walls, perching on lofty eyries and jumping from enormous heights to land safely in conveniently placed carts of straw. Oh, and quite a few acts of random murder!

While I am not qualified to comment on the game play, I am impressed with the artwork and the game’s designers have done a fantastic job at meticulously recreating the streetscapes of Renaissance era Constantinople, from which period many of Istanbul’s most famous landmarks still survive.

We managed to find many of the locations portrayed in the game (compare the Assassin’s screenshots on the left with our photos on the right) :

Kucuk Ayasofya Mosque (or Little Hagia Sophia Mosque) was built in 527 as a church, the Church of Sergius and Bacchus, for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It was converted into a mosque in 1505, just 6 years before Assassin’s Creed Revelations is supposed to be set.

There are two obelisks in what used to be the hippodrome, built during Roman times for chariot racing.

This looks like Disneyland but is actually the entrance to Topkapi Palace which was home to the Ottoman Sultans for 380 years. In the game, Master Assassin Ezio has to sneak in here without being noticed by the guards. I was tempted to do the same to avoid the exorbitant TL40 entrance fee!

The tower is built above the entrance to the harem section of Topkapi Palace. Although Assassin’s Creed is an 18+ game,  Ezio has no access to the harem. Modern day tourists however can get in for an additional 15 Turkish Lira.

Could this be the same fountain?

Fountain of Sultan Ahmed III.

The Hagia Sophia is one of Istanbul’s most famous landmarks. This mosque, like its little sister, began life as a church. Its minarets, mihrab and madrasah were added by Mehmet II The Conqueror. The building has served as a museum since 1935.

The Master Assassin goes to the Grand Bazaar to meet with Piri Reis, a famous cartographer, and collect bombs from him. Nowadays there is a Piri Reis shop at Ataturk Airport. There are no assassins in the Grand Bazaar these days but only the strongest willed of tourists can pass through its 18 gates, 65 streets, 21 caravanserais and 4000 shops with their wallets intact.

Ezio likes to climb the outside of Galata Tower and perch on top of the spire for a bird’s eye view of the city. Modern tourists have to go up by lift and pass through a night club/restaurant before reaching the panoramic viewing deck.

This is a modern day Assassin’s eye view over the Golden Horn taken from the top of Galata Tower.

More views of Galata Tower.

The Maiden’s Tower is situated on a small island on the Bosphorus, guarding the approaches to the city. As long ago as 410BC, iron chains were stretched between the island and Sarayburnu to prevent vessels from passing without permission. Today the tower is used as a restaurant.

I think my son enjoyed his Assassin’s Creed tour of Istanbul. Next destination Boston, USA for Assassin’s Creed III.

78 Derngate, Northampton

78 Derngate is the name, and address, of an interesting little museum in Northampton showcasing the work of two famous men, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke.

Bassett-Lowke (1877-1953) owned and lived in 78 Derngate which is an elegant Georgian townhouse built in 1820 and now a grade II listed building.

He was a Northampton man who founded the firm Bassett-Lowke which, from around 1900 to 1965, was probably the most famous model making brand in the world, specialising in model railways, waterline ship models and model engineering equipment of outstanding quality.

Bassett-Lowke Ltd was the brand but manufacturing was contracted out to firms like Twining Models and Winteringham’s, both Northampton manufacturers now sadly no more.

Bassett-Lowke models were always highly priced and out of reach of the average kid who would be more familiar with makes like Hornby. The firm went bust in 1965 but the brand name was later revived and is now owned by Corgi, who sell their high end model trains under that name at prices like £619 for a single locomotive model.

Of course the original old models are very valuable and highly sought after by collectors. Even Bassett-Lowke’s old mail order catalogues such as those below can sell for upwards of £300, which is more evidence for why you should never throw anything away!

Besides running his model business, Bassett-Lowke was very interested in design and in 1916 he commissioned the famous architect, artist and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) to completely refashion his Derngate house. The results of this dramatic remodelling can now be seen by the public at 78 Derngate. The charitable trust behind the museum spent around £1.4million on faithfully restoring the property to how it must have looked when Mackintosh completed his work.

One of the more striking rooms, though not really my cup of tea, is the bedroom with its striped wall and ceiling.  Apparently George Bernard Shaw, who was a friend of Bassett-Lowke and shared his Fabian socialist politics, stayed in this room. When asked whether the decor would affect his sleep he replied no because he slept with his eyes closed. Incidentally, Bassett-Lowke produced a Bernard Shaw figurine as an ‘O’ scale model railway platform accessory.

78 Derngate was Mackintosh’s last major commission and the only house he designed in England though of course many more examples of his work and career can be found in his home town of Glasgow.

Mackintosh must have been a brave man to walk around Glasgow with a tie like that! Perhaps his dress sense was a factor in his decision in later life to move to Port Vendres in southern France, close to the border with Spain. Here he was able to devote more time to his other talents as an artist.

More information on 78 Derngate can be obtained from the museum’s website.

Camden Lock to Little Venice Walk

While visiting UK last month, I spent a pleasant half-day exploring Camden Lock Market followed by a walk along the towpath of the Regent’s Canal as far as Little Venice and back again (about 4 miles in total).

Camden Lock Market is a bustling collection of shops and stalls spread over an area of converted warehouses, cobbled yards, stables and newer buildings. It is open seven days a week and has become a popular destination for Londoners and tourists to shop for antiques, arty stuff, clothing, accessories and handicraft items from all over the world.

Camden Market is also a good place for food with inexpensive stalls selling dishes from Ethiopia, Peru, Argentina, Nepal, Japan and Holland to name a few. In fact the only food you can’t seem to buy in this East End market is jellied eels and fish and chips.

After stuffing myself with potato curry, a refreshing walk was needed. 

We walked along the old towpath which runs alongside the Regent’s Canal (towpaths were originally used by horses to tow barges). There were a few cyclists, joggers and walkers about but it was far from busy.

Regent’s Canal was opened in 1820 to link the River Thames at Limehouse to the Grand Union Canal junction at Paddington.

The path passes underneath a number of bridges. This one bears the name Henry Grissell. This man was proprietor of Regents Canal Ironworks and his company built bridges over the River Nile, the iron works at Covent Garden Opera House and the railings outside Buckingham Palace among other works. Apparently he was buried at West Norwood Cemetery in a galvanised cast iron tomb. A true Iron Man!

The route passes London Zoo where you might catch sight of some hyenas in enclosures near the canal. There are plenty of other sights to see along the way including a life-sized plastic cow on somebody’s balcony and a Chinese floating restaurant.

The canal runs along the northern edge of Regent’s Park where a handful of beautiful grand houses, in the style of famed architect John Nash, are located. These super luxury homes look old but seemingly were only built in the 1980s and 1990s.

Nash, who played a large part in the planning of this corner of London, originally intended Regents Canal to run through the centre of the park but he was persuaded that the uncouth language of the canal navvies would offend the refined residents of the area! 

There is no such problem these days as the narrow boat residents at Little Venice are a more genteel class of people, living Bohemian lifestyles with pot plants displayed alongside their permanently moored eco-barges.

I saw an advert for a narrow boat and mooring at Little Venice on sale for £75,000. Mooring fees are £4,000 per year.  Compared to other properties in this part of London it might seem quite a bargain but it is a depreciating asset.

There are regular narrow boat tours between Camden Lock Market and Little Venice if you don’t fancy too much walking.